By Capt Joseph R. John, October 23, 2019: Op Ed #453 

For the first time in 243 years, a 4-star decorated and retired US Navy Admiral, Admiral William McRaven, violated the ethos of military professionalism by authoring an Op Ed for release in the New York Times.  McRaven openly attacked the President of the United States and brayed for the removal of the President, stating it is time for a new person in the Oval Office—“the sooner, the better.” 

What does he mean by “sooner”?  Despite the fact that Admiral McRaven knows the Presidential election will take place in one year, he wants the President removed hurriedly.  He is encouraging the public to remove the US President, before all American citizens can exercise their Constitutional right to vote to re-elect President Trump in 2020.  McRaven has been a consistent, vociferous critic of the President, even prior to his election.  McRaven is no longer content with being critical, he has joined with Democrat Socialists and others like George Soros, who for three years, has been funding the effort to void the election of President Trump.

McRaven is subtly alleging that he is a spokesman for current and former members of the military.  Consider his audacity, appropriating for himself the moral authority to speak for all members of the US Armed Forces, when a large majority of members of the US Armed Forces, retired career military personnel, and veterans voted for President Trump, and current polls show they will vote for him again. 

During their training to become Military Officers, to their commissioning, and during their service, it is instilled in every Military Officer, subject to the US Code of Military Justice, to follow the lawful orders of the Commander-in-Chief, and not to participate in any attempt to remove a sitting President of the United States in a Coup d’ Etat.   

Do the American people really want the impeachment of the US President, promoted by Admiral McRaven, Lieutenant General James Clapper, and John Brennan, to lead to the removal of a President from office?  Does the American electorate want a country in which a retired Flag or General Officer can publicly damn the Commander-in-Chief over policy differences and call for his removal from office?  

McRaven is another of the many officers who were carefully screened and selected, over an 8-year period, by Obama to ensure that they were Politically Correct, before he would promote them to Flag and General rank.  Those Politically Correct Flag and General Officers were screened to ensure that they would unquestionably drive Obama’s destructive Social Experiment On Diversity into the US Armed Forces.  Flag and General Officers who opposed Obama’s Social Experiment On Diversity were forced to retire, and the remaining rank and file members of the US Armed Forces were not able to object to the Social Experiment On Diversity if they didn’t want to be court martialed for disobedience of general orders.

Every branch of the US Armed Forces has Obama’s Politically Correct Flag and General Officers, and they continue to drive the destructive Social Experiment On Diversity into the US Armed Forces.  It has been damaging the officer training at all 5 Service Academies.  It initially changed the Rules Of Engagement (ROEs) during combat, and increased Killed In Action (KIA) and Wounded In Action (WIA) by over 300% (President Trump returned those ROE to their origin).  It negatively affected the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces by driving women, with lesser physical qualification than men, into the tip of the spear combat units.  It has also resulted in the increased rape of straight male recruits to unacceptable levels and it did so much more damage.
 

Admiral McRaven’s New York Times Op Ed “crossed the line”!  It was a shocking radically political and subverting article.  McRaven, has joined with James Clapper, John Brennan, George Soros, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Tom Perez, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the far left Progressive/Socialist Caucus in the House of Representatives, led by Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Rep Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), who have been calling for the secret and hurried impeachment of President Trump behind closed doors, while selectively leaking negative snippets to undermine The President.  They are wanting the impeachment to happen before American voters can have the right to have their voices heard in a national presidential election.

McRaven and his fellow Progressives know the President will be re-elected by the American people if the election is held in November 2020; they want him removed from the Oval Office before that ever happens----"the sooner, the better.”  McRaven and his fellow conspirators don’t want an honest and open election to be held, they want to invalidate the 2016 election of President Trump by the 63 million deplorables who voted for President Trump.

Many Flag and General officers and military personnel of all ranks have been repulsed by McRaven’s often stated, strong support for John Brennan, who voted for Communist US Presidential candidate Gus Hall, and became a stealth Muslim convert in support for the appointment of members of the Muslim Brotherhood International Terrorist organization in government positions.

After Brennan was appointed by Obama, he recruited CIA Officers who were Politically Correct, and his promotions within the CIA elevated Politically Correct CIA Officers, that would be acceptable to Obama, to new positions of leadership within the CIA; they are still there.  One of Brennan’s CIA employees, who worked with Vice President Biden on the Ukraine desk in the Obama White House, filed the bogus and untruthful hearsay Whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s conversation with the President of Ukraine—he or she said they didn’t like the tone of the conversation, when they never even heard the conversation.

Brennan led the fake Russia collusion allegation against President Trump, taking his direction from Obama, and is now one of the leaders of the continued treasonous coup attempt to bring down the first President of the United States in history; this time using another fake allegation about a Ukrainian phone call.  The Whistleblower (actually the leaker) who filed the complaint with hearsay information has disappeared.  McRaven has thrown his lot in with conspirators Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Soros, Perez, Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi, and Schumer to initiate a Coup d’ Etat.  The left of center liberal media establishment is supporting the coup in their daily call for the impeachment based on false allegations. 

When one compares the honorable service of thousands of SEALs who courageously went into harm’s way in service to their country, and in certain cases gave their lives in the defense of the Republic, with what McRaven is doing, it is a dishonorable act.  In publishing that Op Ed in the New York Times to encourage national support for the hurried removal of the first US President in history before Americans are allowed to vote, McRaven is violating his oath of office, and betraying the trust servicemen had in him. 

McRaven’s comments in the below listed article are truly shocking, regrettable, and discrediting.  McRaven has revealed himself to be a member of the deep state, working with the left of center liberal media establishment, and discredited Socialists, Progressives, and Leftists in Congress, who have been trying to void the election of the President for three years. 

As a Flag Officer, McRaven’s actions may, in the eyes of many Americans, damage the images of other Honorable Flag and General Officers, who are true Patriots with excellent reputations.  Over the past 243 years, Flag and General Officers have served the Republic in peace and war, and have never participated in an effort to void the election by American Citizens of their US President.

McRaven actions have undermined the public’s view of the US military as the most-trusted and apolitical institution in the nation, that impartially serves the nation’s welfare.  McRaven’s exploitation of his rank and his military service, for partisan political purposes, should be rejected by all clear thinking American citizens.

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John. All Rights Reserved.  The material can only posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.    

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American Greatness

Angelo Codevilla

October 19, 2019

                                                                  “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Retired Admiral William McRaven devoted the bulk of a New York Times op-ed to appropriating for himself the moral and hence political authority of generations of soldiers and sailors (pointedly, especially the female ones) who have sacrificed for America, for “the good and the right.” Then he gratuitously stated—citing no specifics, as if everyone already knows—that “President Trump seems to believe that all these qualities are unimportant or show weakness.”

McRaven concludes, “it is time for a new person in the Oval Office—Republican, Democrat or independent—the sooner, the better.” At the very least, McRaven called for impeachment ahead of an election, or perhaps for a coup, and pretended to do so on the military’s behalf. In fact, his was just one more voice from an establishment that has squandered the public’s trust, senses that it can no longer win elections honestly, and is pulling out all the stops.

It pretends to be trying to take down Donald Trump. In fact, it is trying to do something much bigger: Invalidate the votes of the “deplorables” who oppose them.

I suggest that the just response from self-respecting Americans to McRaven and others like him is: “Who the hell do you think you are?”

Consider the enormity of pretending to speak for past and present uniformed personnel. Given that the overwhelming majority of active-duty and retired armed service members voted for Trump in 2016, and that polls show they are likely to do so again, it’s a patent falsehood to insinuate the rank-and-file’s notion of “the good and the right” matches McRaven’s own.

When consider a few of these notions of “good and right.” Following rules and the chain of command is high among them, especially for the military. Officers are supposed to obey superiors. That authority flows from the president. Why? Because only the president is elected by the whole people, and because the Constitution, which they are sworn to “uphold and defend,” says so. If officers cannot abide superiors, they are supposed to resign their commissions.

But McRaven and a host of senior officers do not resign. They subvert.

The Constitution prescribes all manner of procedures by which any and all who dissent from the president can counter him, including legislation, overriding vetoes, and impeachment. But McRaven’s essay merely, and dishonestly, adds to the united ruling class’s effort to attack Donald Trump outside of these constitutional procedures by feeding the media’s production of innuendos.

The Democratic Party pretends to be trying to impeach. But they know, since any Republican who joins them would be ending his career in elective politics (not, alas, in the establishment), that they have zero chance of removing Trump from office.

They hope, however, that the sheer weight of innuendos—regardless of how implausible—will turn the 2020 election because the media allows no contradiction. That is why they are conducting what they call an impeachment campaign via secret testimony, the content of which the public can know only through what the Democrats and the media say through selective leaking. This is the patent dishonesty to which the former admiral prostitutes himself.

Even as McRaven brays for removing the president, he pretends solicitude for “the republic.” But remember: the American republic is founded on the will of the people, expressed by elections. The foremost thing to keep in mind about what is happening in Washington is that it is, above all, an attempt to subordinate the will of the people, expressed in elections, to the will of the ruling class, expressed through its control of social and political institutions.

The American people’s proper and just reaction should be to remind the ruling class that as Alexander Hamilton said, “here, the people rule,” and hence pointedly to ask our would-be rulers what they have done that we should follow them?

McRaven really does speak for a substantial percentage of senior military officers. Their views are on display nightly on Fox News. It is time for the American people to realize that these, like their counterparts in the intelligence agencies, are no heroes.

If we ask what they have done for us that we should have confidence in them, we realize that these people have lost every war they have waged since 1945. Accommodating themselves to our corrupt ruling class, they have been happy enough to wage endless no-win wars which have killed as many Americans as did World War I. The current military dictionary has no entry for “victory.”

Most recently, thousands of Americans have been killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan because senior officers did not object to the ruling class’s desire to use U.S. forces to settle foreign quarrels by operating in constantly replenished minefields. Living in minefields violates basic military common sense and ethics. But senior officers have prospered. Intertwined with the ruling class, they end their careers on defense contractors’ corporate boards and in villas on the golf course. Now, as part of the ruling class, they join in claiming a right to rule us deplorables regardless of elections. We can thank McRaven for making that clear.

This ex-draftee is inclined to salute them with the middle finger.